No matter how simple and common the job of a sales rep sounds, it still requires a lot of patience and steady positivity to drive leads from the initial contact stage to the final deal closure stage.
Every business thrives on customers and with a good sales team, more leads mean more customers.
So what exactly is a sales pipeline you may ask? Sales reps acquire leads, connect and capture their interest, market products and services to solve pain points and ultimately close the deal; all these steps constitute a process that’s called a sales pipeline.
Building a successful sales pipeline mainly means that sales reps are able to lead more contacts from the initial stage to the deal closure stage to become customers.
The possibility of a high win rate at sales may seem like a distant dream for every salesperson, but it isn’t impossible. The key step in this process- Prospect, Prospect and keep Prospecting!
Brian Tracy of Brian Tracy International has rendered some sound advice in this perspective – “Keep your sales pipeline full by prospecting continuously. Always have more people to see than you have time to see them.”
Setting up a process to increase your customer base not only helps in fetching greater profits but also helps build long-term relationships that enrich and sustain brand loyalty.
Still wondering what a sales pipeline is and how it differs from a sales funnel?
While a sales pipeline is the sequence of actions that a sales rep executes to convert a lead into a customer, a sales funnel is the visual representation of the success rate at each step of the sales pipeline.
Although the main concept of a sales pipeline and sales funnel are the same, there is a vast difference in the insights or results that can be inferred from them. It is important to know the critical difference between the two in order to learn how to boost the efficiency of your sales pipeline.
In order to understand the progress of each step of the sales pipeline, it is vital to take insights from your sales funnel. The coordinated analysis and tracking of the sales pipeline and funnel can help you accelerate the conversion rate achieved from your sales strategy.
How exactly can you perk up your sales pipeline efficiency?
Every time as an entrepreneur, when one sees the sales figures rise there is an inexplicable sense of elation!
How is this achieved? What are the points or processes where streamlining can result in better sales?
Here are 6 easy ways to boost the efficiency of your sales pipeline:
1. Track progress at each stage of your sales pipeline
Basically, a sales pipeline constitutes 5 stages and the vigilance of the sales team at each of these stages can prove to be critical to evaluate the success of the sales pipeline.
The 5 main stages of the sales pipeline include:
- Prospecting
- Qualification
- Proposal
- Closing The Deal
- Repeat Business
It is important to assign reps in sales teams the job of evaluating the efficiency at each stage in order to surmise the overall success of the sales pipeline. Sometimes the clogging of leads at a particular stage can slow down the progress of the pipeline and can ultimately lead to loss of potential prospects and ultimately a lower conversion rate.
Thus tracking each stage of the sales pipeline can not only boost its efficiency but can also guarantee long-term business relationships with the chance of repeat buyers.
2. Understand the potential of your sales pipeline
Every sales team needs to have a plan in place before starting to execute at each stage of the sales pipeline. It becomes vital for sales personnel to identify the potential opportunities at each stage of their sales pipeline and make the most of them.
For this, the first and foremost requisite is to understand whether the prospect or lead is at the ‘ready to buy’ stage or still requires ‘convincing and nurturing’ to be able to proceed to the buying stage.
Once this vital understanding is obtained then the process is fairly simple, sales reps need to adopt different approaches and…
